Remote teaching and distant learning take more and more a significant place in the universities. However, much of courses do not propose practical exercises. The goal of our project VITELS (Virtual Internet Telecommunications Laboratory of Switzerland) is to develop a course that provides practical exercises in the area of telecommunications and computer networks to the students.. The exercises shall be performed by students remotely. Students do not need to be present in particular laboratory rooms. In addition, supplementary tutorial material and theoretical on-line exercises are under development. In total, seven modules and the authentication/authorization infrastructure will be developed and maintained by the different involved institutes and integrated into a common web environment. The basic course will consist of the following seven modules: Simulation of IP Network Configuration, Configuration and Performance Evaluation of a Real IP Network, Management and Configuration of a Virtual Network, Firewalls, Protocol Analysis, Linux System Installation and Configuration, Client/Server Programming. The development of the course by different partners allows to use the different available equipment resources at the different locations and to use the sophisticated technological knowledge and experience available at the various partner organizations.

Given the innovation nature of the project the group in Geneva decided to use the Linux System Installation and Configuration module as an "apprenticeship". In this paper, we present the complete architecture proposed to realize a virtual laboratory for practical exercises.